Eddie Lowe, who was one of the captains on coach Paul Bryant's last Alabama football team in 1982, made history Tuesday night.

Lowe was elected as the first black mayor in his hometown of Phenix City.

The former linebacker, who went on to play professional football in the Canadian Football League, received 64 percent of the votes to avoid a runoff. He will take office in November.

Lowe is a former star at Central High School in Phenix City, where his brother Woodrow is the head football coach. Woodrow, also a former Alabama star, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009.

According to a story in the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer, Eddie Lowe attributed his victory to character, not race.

"What I want us to concentrate on is you always have to look at the quality of the person, regardless of what race or ethnicity they are," he said.

"Fortunate or unfortunate, I'm black, but that should be insignificant. What's important are the values of the person. … I learned that from football, through sports: It's all about the quality of the person, whether he or she can get the job done."